This invention relates generally to motor vehicles (automobiles), and more specifically to a motor vehicle adapted to ensure safe driving and safety of a person seated beside the driver (hereinafter referred to as "front passenger") and a rear passenger seated on a rear seat.
Generally, among car accidents, the head-on collisions claim the most victims. In most of the head-on collisions, the front passenger plunges his head and face into the front window pane (windshield) of the motor vehicle, hitting his chest hard against the dashboard molding and is fatally injured in many cases, while the rear passenger strikes his head and other parts of his body violently against the back rest of a front seat and may be fatally injured. Such injury is caused by the absence of a suitable cushioning support for receiving the front passenger and the rear passenger thrown forward by inertial force.
In order to minimize such injury of the front passenger, motor vehicles have been proposed wherein the front seat for the passenger is made turnable rearwardly of the vehicle so as to confront one of the rear seats. In such type of motor vehicles, the back rest of the rearwardly turned front seat effectively prevents injury of the front passenger in the event of head-on collisions because the back rest serves to cushioningly support the front passenger's body and head and prevents him from plunging directly into the front part of the vehicle body.
Such type of motor vehicles are advantageous in the above respect, but disadvantageous in that when the front passenger seat is turned rearwardly, the driver is caused to face the front passenger in a direction oblique to the front-to-rear direction of the vehicle, which tends to cause the driver's attention to be distracted by the passenger especially when the driver has to look at the mirror of the vehicle on the side of the front passenger.
The rearwardly turned front passenger's seat is useful to secure the passenger's safety in the case of collision, but it is still desired to improve the safety.